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NMAI Library Collections

Friesema Collection

Spring of 2010 the National Museum of the American Indian Library received a grant from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee to process five hundred titles from a major gift of approximately fifteen thousand volumes from Dr. H. Paul and Mrs. Jane Friesema. Paul Friesema has been a member of Northwestern's political science department and an IPR faculty fellow since 1968. He has a PhD in political science from the University of Iowa (1968) and a JD from the Detroit College of Law (1961). He was policy studies director of The Institute of Ecology (TIE), a university research consortium, from 1980 to 1981 and taught at both the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa. Much of his recent work has focused on the politics and policy issues arising from the environmental assessment process, including examining how the assessment process can be incorporated into land use planning. He has also been conducting a long-term study of the political empowerment of native peoples on issues concerning natural resources. Friesema also serves on a study team that is examining the possible outlines of a series of national parks in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Among his current research projects is a study of the new biological and cultural roles that national parks will struggle to assume in the next century.

The impressive donation reflects Dr. Friesema's professional interests. The core of the collection relates to American Indians, but also includes indigenous and tribal peoples outside the Western Hemisphere. It also contains books about cultural resources and values for indigenous people worldwide. In addition to the American Indian core, the collection is strong in Indian-White relationships, archaeology, anthropology, history, policy, art, and literature with a special focus on national parks and protected areas. Titles chosen to be catalogued through the Smithsonian Women’s Committee grant support current programs and exhibits of the National Museum of the American Indian and meet the needs of curators and visiting researchers that in turn increase the knowledge base at the Smithsonian Institution for Native American studies